Does your staff understand how to respond to social media comments? Good or bad, it’s important for your company to respond to comments from your audience.
How should you handle compliments from customers? Do you know how to recognize trolls that should be deleted, blocked, and ignored? Does your staff understand what to do when complaints come in? These are all important features of social media comments that should be handled accordingly. This means you need to train staff to handle compliments, trolls, and complaints in comment sections to protect your brand reputation.
Why should you respond to comments?
Like comments on reviews, comments posted to your social media posts are visible to everyone. This means any responses your company makes to these comments will also be visible and must be considered carefully before you post your responses. Your company’s responses reflect your brand’s personality and professionalism. If your company doesn’t post a response to comments from customers, especially comments that are positive, you’ll lose engagement with those who commented on your posts. Proper engagement helps you build trust and loyalty and can help you reach other potential customers through the platform’s algorithm.
It’s also important to handle comments, such as complaints and trolls, correctly. Trolls are pretty easy to handle but can be difficult to spot at times. Complaints require careful handling of the issue to ensure the complaint is addressed appropriately. An invitation to personally address the complaint, followed by comments showing what has been done to resolve said complaint, can show that your staff is willing to address issues and correct them to ensure customer satisfaction.
How should your team handle positive comments?
Handling positive social media comments should be pretty easy and straightforward, but that’s not always the case. If your team doesn’t respond quickly, you might lose credibility with that customer and others who read the comments. It’s a good idea to have someone respond to comments daily to ensure regular and continuous engagement.
Now that you have the timing figured out, it’s important to thank the commenter by name. This adds a personal touch and helps others see that you care enough to use the customer’s name rather than only sending a generic comment. Generic comments can look and feel robotic, almost like you have an AI chatbot handling the comments for you.
Add reinforcement of the compliment by responding appropriately. If they say they have a great experience with one of your sales team members, thank them specifically by saying “We’re glad you had a great experience with ___.” Continue with encouragement for further engagement such as asking for photos of the products they purchased or the finished look of the services provided.
How should your team handle complaints?
Nobody wants to receive a bad review or negative social media comments, but it happens. What should your team do to handle complaints and negative feedback? The first thing to do is to respond promptly, which means within 1-2 hours during business hours. This means you should comb your posts for complaints several times a day. This can be done using an AI tool to flag some keywords with alerts that show you the negative feedback.
Ensure you keep emotions out of your response by staying professional and empathetic. Offer to move the conversation offline through DMs, text messages, phone calls, or an in-person meeting. Don’t use copy-paste responses. Once the complaint has been handled, encourage your customer to post additional comments and post your solution as well.
How should you handle trolls?
Oftentimes, trolls can be recognized as comments that are inappropriate or seem to be clickbait. Don’t engage with these comments. Hide and delete the comments from your social media posts and block the user who posted them. These are your posts and your property, which means you get to set the rules and control the narrative.
It’s not a good practice to respond to inappropriate comments or trolls with humor. This can backfire and be misunderstood. Help your team recognize the comments they need to delete and block to handle internet trolls.
How can you help your team respond appropriately?
Most comments will fall into common themes, and that can make it pretty easy for you to create a response cheat sheet with sample replies or these common situations. Ensure your team understands the requirement to make each comment personalized to the customer who sent the comment.
Assign a dedicated team member or use shifts to monitor social media comments daily, ensuring you maintain a high level of engagement with your customers. Create a tracking system for handling complaints and highlight compliments, especially those that mention specific team members.
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